Can't Get Over The Prominence Of The Story Of Abraham Sacrificing Isaac In My Childhood. Can't Get Over

made a uquiz

Controversial Truths About Ancient Egypt Masterpost

The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction

The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity

We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either

Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender

The gods didn’t actually have animal heads

Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)

The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous

Noses (and ears, and arms) broke off statues and reliefs for a variety of reasons, none of which are “there is a widespread archaeological conspiracy to hide the Egyptian ethnicity”

They did that thing on TikTok again, except this one guy did the arrangement

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Keep up the good work guys

“Here’s what I know: if someone’s much better than you at something, they probably try much harder. You probably underestimate how much harder they try. I’m not saying that talent isn’t a meaningful differentiator, because it certainly is, but I think people generally underestimate how effort needs to be poured into talent in order to develop it. So much of getting good at anything is just pure labor: figuring out how to try and then offering up the hours. If you’re doing it wrong you can do it a thousand times and not produce any particularly interesting results. So you have to make sure you’re trying the right way. […] I’m curious about the ugliness of trying, the years and years of wanting and hoping and working. I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by craft. I think it’s because it requires such a sustained tenacity. Like Michelangelo saying that he just chips away at everything that didn’t look like David: a hundred thousand little motions to reveal the underlying beauty. I think a lot of people want to be but they don’t want to do. They want to have written a book, but they don’t want to write the book. They want to be fit, but they don’t want the tedium of working out. They’re ashamed of rejection and they’re ashamed of imperfection. I might want lots of people to subscribe to this Substack, but do I want to workshop a post every day? Donna Tartt once said in an interview that if the writer’s not having fun the reader isn’t either. I think people make the best things when they love the process, when they willingly shoulder the inherent uncertainty and pain that comes with it. It’s almost like a form of prayer: you offer up what you can even though the reward is uncertain. You do it out of love.”

— Ava, effort (via luxe-pauvre)

I don’t know who wrote this or why, but this writing is just *chef’s kiss*

**Editing to add: I now know that this was said by Lindy West in her book The Witches are Coming. Good to know! 

The really funny part about the whole adults-playing-E-rated-games discourse is that it implies that adults should only and exclusively consume media that’s full of graphic violence and explicit sex, which raises some frankly fascinating questions about what these people think adulthood is.

“Why does the third of the three brothers, who shares his food with the old woman in the wood, go on to become king of the country? Why does James Bond manage to disarm the nuclear bomb a few seconds before it goes off rather than, as it were, a few seconds afterwards? Because a universe where that did not happen would be a dark and hostile place. Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain.”

— Terry Pratchett, “Let There Be Dragons” (A Slip of the Keyboard)

I never used to understand what “making connections” looked like but it turns out it’s standing at a party and saying “I’ve been thinking about getting into the film industry” and someone saying “Oh, Sarah works in the film industry” and Sarah yelling from accross the room “Did someone say my name?!?!?!”